The Denver Folklore Center is a small guitar store and repair shop located in the Platte Park neighborhood in Denver. In the redesign of their website I wanted to focus on bringing their wonderful history and superb level of service to the forefront while creating a modern and easy to use website.
Role: UX Researcher; UX/UI Designer; Visual Designer
Research
The redesign of The Denver Folklore Center website took place over the course of three weeks beginning with research. Research was conducted with the store owner and his staff as well as a collection of prospective customers.
Jeff is Saul’s head luthier. A luthier is a builder and repairer of stringed instruments, and Jeff has been a luthier for a long time and even teaches classes at the Swallow Hill Music School in clawhammer banjo. What I learned from Jeff is that in his experience most instrument related purchases are based on instinct and trust. It’s how a guitar feels in your hands, but it’s also that the luthier at the store set the guitar up well, and knowing that the staff is capable. Jeff also told me that when it comes to repairs, he gets more business off of one good repair than any ad he places.
What I took from my time talking to the people at The Denver Folklore Center is that their current website filled the need of needing a website, but was failing to do what they wanted it to do. They wanted a website that told their history, built trust with customers, and sold the store itself as much as any one of their high end instruments.
But will people buy instuments online?
The main question that had to be answered is whether or not people would buy expensive instruments online? To find out I talked to guitar players across the country of various levels of ability. The answer was largely no. All respondents said that they have to play a guitar before they buy it. They had purchased starter instruments online, but never a high end guitar.
The conversation shifted then to what it would take to get them to buy guitars online. One respondent said that he had considered buying a guitar on Reverb.com because of their comprehensive rating system, allowing buyers to trust that they would receive an item corresponding to what they saw online.
What became apparent is that high quality images were important. But establishing The Denver Folklore Center as honest experts interested in players not profits is an equally important goal. The goal of their website is largely to bring a player through their doors to meet the staff and hold the instrument in the precisely humidified air. Then when they decide to purchase an expert will set up the instrument so it’s perfectly matched to the player. But the website also needs to convey that experience to the person who might just buy it online because it’s a rare or exceptionally nice used model, or because they trust The Denver Folklore Center.
Creating Personas
Once I had condensed my interviews and gathered all my insights, I was able to create personas to guide my designs.
John Klein started playing guitar in his early 20's to help him pick up girls. He learned a few songs and broke a few hearts, but found himself better at filling cavities than picking strings. But he never got rid of that first guitar and would go through phases of playing and learning new skills. He started a family dentistry and a family too, and made sure that music was important in his family's lives. With success he found himself often buying new instruments and learning new instruments and styles of play. Now John's children have lives of their own, and his taste in instruments skews toward the unique, vintage, and sentimental, as his first guitar still gets regular play. Going to the local guitar shop to hang out has become a hobby itself. He's always curious about what new guitars have arrived, new and used.
If John is shopping for guitars online, he needs to know the shop is reputable.
John needs instrument listings to be as accurate and comprehensive as possible.
John needs an easy way to interact with the store that has the instrument he's interested in.
Aidan Brady has devoted his life to stringed instruments. His passion started early, as he comes from a family of musicians. His mother, Ann played the harp while his dad Kevin was a band director before switching careers to support his growing family. Aidan has pursued his career in music with single-minded determination. Personal relationships and alternate career paths be damned. Yet his single basket full of eggs is still in tact, as he spends his days in a van richocheting around the country and his nights playing and singing to patrons of small bars anywhere. His only constant companions are adorned with strings. He has a small but important collection on instruments. Each one a finely tuned tool. His Gibson Les Paul Custom electric guitar a wonderful swiss army knife, and his vintage Martin acoustic a paring knife for more delicate cuts. Both fit and feel like they were made for hands.
If Aidan needs a guitar repair, he often needs it as soon as possible and done correctly.
Aidan needs an easy way to interact with a Luthier before bringing a guitar to them.
Aidan needs to verify quality even when other people endorse a business.
Designing
With research completed, I was able to define the following goals.
Build trust by leaning on the history of the Denver Folklore Center
Offer alternatives to purchasing an instrument such as Appointments to Play or Rentals
Offer as much information as possible about products
Establish The Denver Folklore Center and the staff there as experts
Convey the experience of the physical store online and bring more customers in
Wireframing
I moved forward with a layout that I liked, and set forth building wireframes.
With wireframes complete, I was able to begin usability testing. With each completed test, I made small incremental improvements and raised fidelity.
Eventually the UI was decided, alongside the Information Architecture and it was time to crank up the fidelity. At this point I decided to visit the store’s branding and reimagine the logo to see if I couldn’t come up with something a little more modern. I also wanted to use a color palette that suggested a vintage feel.
A New Logo
I felt that the original logo for The Denver Folklore Center limited the colors I could use in my design. I also remembered that Saul wanted to appeal to a younger audience. I felt that I could address those issues by designing a sleek new logo.
I wanted the logo to be modern, simple, and communicate what The Denver Folklore Center has to offer. I began by sketching a number of different concepts.
Once I had a concept I liked I digitized it and ideated upon it further. I then performed testing upon the ones I liked best to determine which would make it to the final design.
I feel that the final logo design does an excellent job of illustrating what The Denver Folklore Center offers, subtly incorporating aspects of a guitar, banjo, and mandolin. I also wanted to incorporate the initials of The Denver Folklore Center as much as possible, but also not make them obvious. The left, guitar portion is designed to be reminiscient of a lower case “d.” The center headstock/neck of the instruments features the slight bend at the top as well as the bridge within the body forming a lower case “f.” The right portion which imitates a banjo is designed to represent the “c” as well. Early iterations featured a break in the arc, however this felt disjointed and incomplete.
When combined with the chosen font, the new complete logo is clean and explains what the Denver Folklore Center actually offers.
Bringing it Together
The final hurdle was bringing everything together in high fidelity and creating mobile versions of the website. Below are final mockups associated with the design.
Testing
With the prototype complete I was able to conduct usability testing. During testing users were receptive to some of my ideas. Most notably the "Appointment to Play" option was well received.
Other parts of my design were more contentious. The color of the site design was both admonished as feeling too bright and irrelevant. Other users were more receptive with one user saying "It makes me think of old cars," which is the exact feel I wanted to convey. However I would experiment with warmer colors that are common on other guitar store websites.
Overall I think I was able to convey the history and expertise of The Denver Folklore Center with more ways to learn about and interact with the store.